


One More Second Alone

by tafih



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Amy ships Kastle, Changing Perspectives, Extended Scene, F/M, POV Third Person, S2E11, Slight Canon Divergence, before the after, hospital scene rewrite, kastle - Freeform, s2 spoilers, the abyss - Freeform, the kastle we deserve!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 17:13:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17584958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tafih/pseuds/tafih
Summary: Amy, with a roll of her eyes and a scoff from her lips, decides to give them one more second alone.Frank gets one more second alone with Karen and the world is a little brighter.(Slight re-write of hospital scene in S02E11: The Abyss)





	One More Second Alone

“You have to _listen to us, okay?!_ ”

The room quiets.

She stares at him, maybe glares a bit. Her body heaves in and out with the exhaustion she feels just being there, compelling him to see her. 

* * *

He hates that the first thing he _feels_ is how much he wants her, how much he wants to touch her, how much he wants to take her face in his hands.

He hates that he knows he needs to stop this. Finish it. Since he knows she will stay with him,

_for him._

_She deserves better._

He hates that he needs to push her away.

“I need the two of you to walk out, okay?” The words spill and stutter from over his tongue and through his lips. “Please, just give us a second alone.”

Madani does that thing with her face, her THE GALL OF YOUface. So he says, “Madani, please, just one second.”

Amy drops the keys into Karen’s open hand. He watches her, watches as she watches the other two leave the room.

“Can I ask you something,” he says, before the door even closes, “That Matt Murdock, does he know you’re here?"

Her lips curl in to wet them and he knows the answer.

Her gaze flitting away and her sigh just confirm it.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” is what comes from him but he really wants to ask “Why?”

_Why are you throwing so much away for a piece of shit like me?_

“What does that have to do with this?” she retorts.

_Why?_

“Come on, Karen, he’s good.” He can’t look at her when he says it though. _Fuck, it hurts too much._ “Don’t throw that away for me.”

* * *

She brings the keys to the cuffs. Her movements are choppy, stilted, and rough. Her next sigh expresses frustration.

She walks around the length of the bed. She takes the other cuff with the expanse of her hand. She feels like she should be shaking. The cuffs rattle but her hands do not tremble.

“Hey,” he mutters. She knows he is staring up at her. She can feel the heat of his gaze. Every single time, every single moment they have ever spent together, she could feel that indescribable, inexplicable heat. “You gotta walk away now, Karen.”

She says nothing, does not even look at him.

It hurts too much.

* * *

“Come on, Karen,” he pleads. “Look, I know you, alright? You’re brave. You’re strong.” He has to close his eyes. He sees her heart breaking in her posture, her gait. He can see the look of sorrow and misery in her eyes when he closes his.

_God, fuck this._

He also sees her bravery, her strength.

He sees how much he wants this.

He opens them. “But you are so goddamn stubborn, and you will throw everything away for me, and I cannot let that happen.”

* * *

She scoffs. She cannot believe him sometimes. “So, it’s okay for them to risk everything but not me?”

He shakes his head back and forth. “Karen, don’t do that -Look, they-” he reaches up and points out the door. “That kid needs me to stay alive, alright? Eff-Madani, Madani, she’s as batshit and lost as I am - I mean - she’s lost, Karen, it’s not the same.”

He is deflecting. He is avoiding. He is pushing her away.

She feels it with every word he says.

“What if there’s a better way?” she gives back. “What if there is? What if you and I-” those words hang in the air, “we’ll figure it out together?”

She means it. She wants it.

_Why can’t he see that?_

* * *

Something in him breaks. “No- no, there’s no- there’s no warm, cozy ending-”

 _“Frank, listen to me,”_ she whispers.

“ _Not for me, Karen._ ”

* * *

She can’t. She shouts, “You **_cannot_ ** keep loving people in your dreams.”

She finally meets his gaze.

With his eyes, he tries to tell her otherwise and he says, “There’s no light at the end of the road, Karen. There’s no light.”

 _But doesn’t he see? There’s so much light in his eyes._ “There could be if you let it.”

“No.” He turns away from her again.

“You could-"

“No, I don’t want that. I can’t do that.”

“You could choose to love someone else _instead_ of another war.”

* * *

“I don’t want to.”

It is both the truth and the greatest lie.

He’s seen it.

Their after.

Their little girl, with her eyes, his lips, blonde-brown hair floating in the air as she runs after their dog in the park - his second chance at happiness, at a family, at love,

_at redemption._

They would live in a place with a glen in the back, a place with land. He would tend a bar a few blocks down. She’d probably keep writing or be a PI, something that can scratch her inquisitive itch. Their girl would be a ballerina-baseball player. The three of them would lounge on their worn couch with one of those microfiber blankets strewn over their legs, cups of marshmallows with cocoa in their hands.

He has seen this.

Without a shred, an ounce of guilt - and that scares him more. Scares him more than anything else. Scares him more than dying.

He sees Karen smiling at him through the fog, from beneath his gaze, his love on her finger gleaming in the sun as she tucks her hair behind her ear.

Just like Maria in his dreams.

Not to replace Maria. But to live a second life as the man he has always been, with another woman who knows.

 _It doesn’t change how I feel about you,_  she said.

_It should._

_It doesn’t._

That after. He has seen it so many times.

What has he done to deserve these amazing women in his life? With all his bullshit, all the blood on his hands, the graves in his shadows, he still gets to see her fight so hard for him.

He can’t do that to her. He can’t contaminate that, bring her down into his depths. She has her own shit to deal with, he knows, but his would drown her.

Like the sudden tide. 

Like a poison. 

Like a cancer. 

“You know something that- that kid out there, she got people who want to kill her. Serious people, Karen. So that means I’m gonna go and find them and I’m going to kill them. I’m going to _murder them_ , Karen.”

“Yeah,” she says through her teeth.

“I’m gonna do that to keep her alive because that’s _my life_. That’s what _I_ do. You wanna be a part of that?"

She rips the cuffs off the bed frame and walks-

“Hang on, just-” he groans. “God.” His legs inch off the bed; the cuffs rattle; and for all of his trying to push her away, he hates seeing her turn her back to him.

 _I don’t really think you want me to go_ , she said. As he cradles his hand, he knows that she’s right.

_She’s always right._

He wants her to stay. He wants that after with her. “Karen, I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you came here,” he says like a sinner at confession.

She turns to him.

“You sat with me,” he goes.

Then, she says, with all that makes her beautiful to him, “So make it mean something.”

* * *

He stands.

She gulps as he walks to her, step by uneasy step.  

“I gotta walk out of here and you can’t do it with me.” His last attempt. His last stretch of effort disappearing, whatever he is trying to accomplish falling through his fingers as he stares at her. 

Her hand to his shoulder, as it always does. “Just…”

* * *

One more second.

* * *

And her face blooms into a smile. " _Frank._ " She smiles at him, an uplifting of her lips that is so full of so much. Her pain, her heart, her toil, and strain - all to make him see, to make him understand. "You know I can."

* * *

That's it. 

That is all it takes. 

A pretty smile on a pretty girl and everything in him wavers. A laugh leaves him in a breath as he shakes his head in disbelief. 

* * *

They both wonder why the world allows them moments like this - where they can be in the same space and feel eternity with just the two of them.

He loves her. It kills him to admit it but he loves her.

She loves him. She does not need to say the word to know.

They love.

They are love.

That diminishing space as their faces come together like an eclipse, hands folding together - like they have so many times before - in that elevator, in the dreams they don’t realize they share - that is love.

* * *

He can’t.

* * *

She shouldn’t.

* * *

“I-,” he starts. His eyes close and she knows his misery plays again and again in his mind. "You-"

He is still pulling himself back. He cannot will himself to do this, to reach for the only thing that has made him happy in this second lifetime.

“Frank…” But she pulls him to her. With her hand, with her heart, with her words - _her gravity_. "We can do this." 

She lifts her face to regard him like she would the sun who knows his burning heat could kill her. But she regards him for his warmth, the sincerity that makes him who he is.

First, their features graze across each other’s, their touch so soft, tender, and undying.  

* * *

Like a ship to Polaris, her lips find his and his world is only her.

* * *

He should say something. But he can’t. Lord knows he can’t.

She is all he can see and feel, touch and know. The clouds, the fog, the burdens disperse until only he remains,

 _with her._  

* * *

Chaste, simple, whole. One kiss and then another. Nothing more but that's all they need. Their lips part and their foreheads brush against each other again.

It is only her. It is only him. 

That inch between them contains the infinite cosmos. 

* * *

“Karen.”

“I know.” Gentle. Understanding.

“ _Karen,_ ” he weeps.

He weeps as the world returns over him like a downpour.

He crossed the line. He stepped over the line he swore he would never. He bound her to him.

But so did she. She reaches out her hand, taking his face, breathing in the air she only finds with him.  

* * *

She is a star on her own, a celestial whose light shines through her own darkness and shatters through his. They fell into each other's orbit and all they can do is meet. She meets him and he meets her. Their gravity compelled them to each other.

Their meeting is no collision, no explosion, no black hole that draws in grief.

No.

They are something greater. Her light and his heat have come together, and the universe is brighter for it.

“Finish this.” Her hand falls to his shoulder again. Then over his heart. “Then find me.”

The door clatters as it opens.

The after will have to come later.

* * *

* * *

‘Ew,” Amy quips when she finally walks in, as if she hadn’t been ABSOLUTELY peeking through the slats of the blinds to peep on Frank sucking face with a blonde. "You guys are gross." 

The lady winces and red erupts across her cheeks as she turns away. _Karen, was it?_

For Frank, it is a quick passing thing, what Amy catches on his face. It is probably the first time she has ever seen him _calm_. Not brooding or anything, just calm.

And a bit sheepish. A wince of a smile. 

 _LOL,_ she chuckles internally as they straighten up and while Madani walks in with the orders for Frank to put on the uniform.

The moment passed.

But she is glad she gave them that one more second alone to have it.

**Author's Note:**

> Took a break from all the fics I should be finishing hahahah - hope you liked it!


End file.
